All Fall Down
by Narcolover
Summary: Salazar, Rowena, Helga, and Godric discover they lack the qualities they treasure.
1. Salazar

disclaimer: don't own Harry Potter, yadda yadda yadda

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"Salazar," I hear the winds whisper to me as I gallop along the dirt roads. The disappointment in Helga's voice.

"Salazar," they screech through the trees. The horror and shock in Rowena's.

"Salazar," they roar down the plains. The anger and disgust in Godric's.

I am alone. I am too proud, too proud to admit that I was wrong, even to myself. Too proud to be wrong about the value of blood.

Godric would say that I'm not proud enough. Not proud enough to need to be worthy of my pride, but he would be wrong. I'm not proud enough, but that is not the reason. I am not proud of my Muggle heritage. Were I as proud as I am famed to be, I would have fought for the right for people like me to be taught at the school I helped to found. But the most talented, such as my three co-founders, are always pure-blooded. Only the best should be allowed in the most spectacular place of learning that my dear friends and I built up from the ground.

I left.

So noble Godric, my dearest friend, cannot respect me any longer. Good. I am dirt, I do not deserve respect from such a noble, powerful, pure-blooded wizard. So beautiful, wise Rowena's precious blood will never be tainted with my own dirty blood. The integrity of the Ravenclaw blood will not be compromised by the dirt of the Slytherin blood, as much as I wish to become one with the beautiful, clever witch. So kind Helga will never smile at me again, her smile overflowing with friendship.

I love them all, in their own ways. Helga as a sister. Godric, not as a brother, but as something even more. Rowena...words cannot describe my love for Rowena. My pointless, stupid love for Rowena. My love for a woman who is more than I could ever be. How could I not leave, not spare them all from the filth that I am?

I will never have an heir, though I have lain with many women in hopes of drowning my love for Rowena, and will likely lay with many more. Out of habit, I reach for the locket I always carry in my pocket, the locket that Rowena fashioned for me, with my symbol embossed on it, a serpent. It is not in my pouch, and I remember angrily throwing it at the last woman I bedded, her pocketing it as she fled.

How could I have been so stupid? How could I have fallen apart like that? I am cool, I am collected, and I am better than that. But I know that is a lie, just like the purity of my blood. I am emotional, and anger quickly. I am not worthy of being a founder, especially of being the founder of the great house of Slytherin.

I hid behind false pride, false blood, and a false coolness, as well as the real ones of my hand-picked students. I am nothing.


	2. Rowena

disclaimer: don't own Harry Potter, yadda yadda yadda

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I can still remember the day. I can still remember the second I heard it. I can remember the moment she said we four pillars would be cut down to three. I laughed in her face. Naturally. What patience did I have with fortune tellers back then? I thought they were worthless. I thought they just pretended to see things, made things up to make a living.

I was wrong. So wrong.

They called me wise. I was bookish and learned, and valued those traits above all others. Yet I laughed in the face of anything supernatural. How could anyone presume to know what would happen when common sense screamed that the only possible way to know what might be was to research the past, and look for patterns. Fortune tellers would never dream of doing something so mundane as that. They were always putting on airs, waving their hands about, wearing gaudy, gauzy scarves.

But I could never forget those whispered words. That one of us four would leave us, betray us, and never return. I know now that my seemingly rock-solid belief that fortune telling was a load of hogwash was just the logic I fought to keep in place denying my feelings. And I thought I was wise?

When Salazar started withdrawing, complaining about allowing Muggleborns into the school, I smothered my intuition even more with my logic. How could I breathe with my inner self buried so deep? How did I not kill my soul?

One day, he left. I broke. But now I am healed. Jabin, our Divination professor healed me. He fed my soul, he fed my inner self. And it is now powerful. I have learned that the wisdom of the soul is the most important.

Helga refused to leave me alone. It was quite annoying, really. Could she not see that I no longer needed her? Did she think that I would hurt myself over Salazar's departure? Perhaps, had I not heard the prophecy about him leaving I would have. But I heard it, and I knew that I had Jabin, someone wise to turn to, someone who could make me whole again.

I am whole. I am wise. I am everything I ever wanted to be, but went about the wrong way, making cow eyes at Salazar, and living in books. I need no one, and nothing to complete me, to make me wise.

I am completely sane, for the first time in my life. I can breathe at last! I moved out of my chambers immediately, naturally, and into Jabin's quarters in the North Tower, giving myself to him mind, body, and soul.

Helga and Godric do not need me, nor I them. They no longer want me. Both want to turn me back into that weak, whimpering, smothered girl who came to Hogwarts with them. They loved that girl, and that girl loved them in return. But that girl is gone. She has become a woman, a woman who loves no other human, save Jabin, who showed her the way. And Helga and Godric are unable to comprehend that the wise woman in the North Tower is the higher, more aware form of the girl they once loved.


End file.
